AL J

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I might be wrong in my interpretation here... this movie is vague about a few important details... I think they're important. If you don't want spoilers, just watch the movie. Then come back and read my review if you have any confusion. I loved it. SPOILERS COMING... The bully in this is obsessed with the lead girl's return to school from some unexplained absence... and they never once show Abigail's parents. She appears to be in her house alone... maybe emancipated. The way the end happened, I just think that Abigail's parent(s) did something to her, probably her father, and she turned them in. That's why when she returns the bully is so obsessed, because of her own home torment that she herself isn't strong enough to stand up to. The bully attacks Abigail because the bully girl is mad at herself. The words she chooses indicate the same sexual problems the bully faces. The reflect how the bully feels about herself and how she acts based on how she is treated at home... and more than likely how Abigail was also previously treated. They both require the affection and approval of the older man because of they both come from dysfunctional relationships with father figures. It's a cliche for a reason. But it's really well done here. And the teacher-student relation ship was complicated, he slipped and they had near adult chemistry... I don't want to excuse his behavior because he could have recognized and been clearly, sooner, but ultimately he was respectful and the story rightfully gives him a pass, doesn't throw away his life for an "almost" moment. They don't beat you over the head with what happened, you have to piece it together and it's really well written and presented. Early I thought the bullying was a little one dimensional and over the top mean... but by the end it was explained incredibly well. Especially if the dots connect like I think they do. I may have missed things and I might be completely off but as I read it, as I saw it, that's why the bully was obsessed and I think the final look they shared confirmed it. The smirk on Abigail's face wasn't "I beat you"... it was understanding. And that scene was a nice full-circle moment from the opening scene. Really smart film. Really surprised me.

This is a better show than your typical teen drama. I am not the audience for this and I stayed with it... great scenery... solid acting... and zero insecurities that plague all these teen dramas. What I mean is: No one in this is blackmailing anyone. There is no surprise murders. There is no secret affairs. No treasure hunt. No global catastrophe. No secret coven of witches. And when the drama can be solved by a single line of dialog it doesn't make us wait five episodes for the character to say it. This is a grounded, confident in what it wants to do, show. I enjoyed it. It held me. It's real people dealing with real stuff and some outstanding eye candy and surfing action. This is much better than what you're expecting it might be.

This is an agenda driven movie with politics on it's sleeve. And I agree with the political side this movie represents... that said: this is insufferable and inaccessible. It wants to teach society to be better but it argues it in the worst possible ways. What I mean is... the main character multiple times argues on behalf of a better society. She uses her brother's birthday as an excuse to berate him about societal ills. She discusses misgendering. She is obviously and openly of the Greta Thunberg ilk... which again, I agree with the politics. What I don't like is how when her future self shows up and clearly the future is in distress... her future self drops hints about no more salmon, there are air raid sirens in the background of one of the talks, apparently in the future you can't have 3 kids... many hints at a bleaker future. How all this fits is... why is this socially responsible person who has just been given the ability to change future and past via time-travel communication using that power to micro-manage minor details of her personal dramas? She never asks about the sirens... doesn't ask about all the hints at a world gone wrong... doesn't get info to "do this" or "change that" that might send the world in a better direction... the character at her core is entirely selfish and ultimately unaware. It's a hard watch... the actress is really good... the character is hard to watch. I think the acting is great. The production was great to look at. The potential for a good story was there... just drop the socially responsible stuff entirely, or lean into it... but just mentioning it, with THIS character being THIS "responsible" and then ignoring the implications you've hinted at... I couldn't escape this thought in my head the entire time I watched: "...are you really going to lecture me about the state of the world while you use a potentially world altering super power to negotiate a summer fling?" And if you make a drinking game where you drink every time the main character misuses the word "literally" -- you will literally die.

This is frustratingly stupid. The characters and situation and setting is just enough for me to keep watching but as it goes it becomes more and more predictably stupid. Spoilers to follow... The sheer number of timers I thought in the first season "oh, they got him now!" only to have it be dismissed by just glaringly convenient plot stumbles... the equivalent of the murder victim tripping over a stump only to be killed. Dumb stuff. Examples: The daughter is a first hand witness to the initial murder. I'm like "just tell the cops!" which she drags out through two episodes... then when she does tell the cops they completely ignore her... she names her brother as the shooter... ignored... then they bring in the hotshot "CBI" investigator with the no-nonsense look and I'm thinking "yeah, this guy ain't gonna buy the bad guy's rhetoric..." Nope. He ignores everything. The bad guy gives a simple "I didn't do it!" and that's enough for all law enforcement to stop investigating. Then in season two, the main girl gets shot in like episode two and I'm looking at four more seasons, she's a witness, the daughter of the bad guy, the love interest of the main guy... and four more seasons... so I know she's gonna live though the shot, so it becomes tedious to wait around for the 7 minutes of screen time when she is supposedly dead. It's sophomoric emotional manipulation. Like when the kids video tape the bad guy and you're thinking "finally! they got his ass!" Nope. The kid with the video camera doesn't make it 20 feet before he falls and breaks the camera. Which I have to admit, I called... I said, "no way, episode 2 of season 2, can they have video evidence of the bad guy... that tape isn't going to last long..." And they didn't even give it another scene. It's just intentionally manufacturing drama and dragging out a very, very simple story, manipulating the audience the entire time with a plot that could be solved with one line of dialog to the right law enforcement officer. Oh... and the kids in this are clearly adults... the main character sports a 5 o'clock shadow at a supposed age of 16... I Google the actor and learn he was 29 when playing this 16 year old... it shows. It makes it hard to not shout at the screen "act like an adult!" when he does stupid immature things... frequently. I see him and expect him to act more wisely and mature... he looks like he should be old enough to know better. Dumb. Two stars because it has a bad guy I hate which is it's own form of compelling, and a setting that films well. But if you are triggered by melodrama, histrionics, and glaring manipulation by a story teller, stay away from this. It exists as proof that our entertainment is saturated and people aren't really trying anymore. I read through some of these reviews and I have to conclude that they all come from the target audience of teens... teens who haven't learned what good story telling is yet. Poor teens who are going to grow up with this as an example. I fear for the future of story telling when in 40 years the film makers of that time are all going to be influenced by this.

Offensive in every way. This is supposed to be a female empowering thing but it relies on the incompetence of the male counterparts, not on some degree of clever by the main (hideous) character. I hated the main character. I hated how heroic she was made to look. I hated how both of the main awful characters survived being abducted and sentenced to death by the Russian mafia, only to have the "hitmen" walk away from living people in both instances and not verify their work. This is not the women being clever and overcoming some daunting obstacle. This is the hitmen completely failing to do their job. I feel horrible for poor Peter Dinklage... I was like "awesome, you wait ladies... he's tough and he means business and you're going to get what is coming!" Then he sends incompetent people. Doesn't verify it. Allows his mother to be tortured and still cuts a deal at the end. All the menace of the first half of the film is completely destroyed in the second half... and not by anything Rosemand Pike does. It's as if he is playing two difference characters. I'll never buy him as a movie tough guy again. This ruined that. And I was rooting for the hitmen and Peter, and not out of some misogyny against the women. The two female leads, their characters, are arguably the most horrible people I have ever seen portrayed in film. The actresses are great... but these characters are the worst of the worst. That's not an exaggeration. What they do, how they justify it, how she thinks she is above the mafia types because she does her fuckery in a court of law... it's disgusting. Stealing old people's lives. Gleefully. And it's not until the final scene of the movie that she faces any repercussions, but it's too little too late, it left a whole wall of victims still in a screwed situation, millions of dollars unaccounted for because even though she is shot nothing about this ending indicates the machine won't stop... and there is zero justice for Diane Wiest. I hated every bit of this movie and the tacked on justice at the end wasn't enough to stop some people from thinking "the hero" died. People don't get satire. You have to spell it out for them. Too many people think Tony Montana was the hero... they hang his poster... I hope no young women see this and misunderstand it and make this character their hero.

It's kinda dumb and basic, and clearly written for a specific audience (teens). Every adult disappears and your entire town gets blocked off from the rest of the world... but this event is basically forgotten as soon as it happens and everyone immediately falls into "I guess this is how we live now..." casualness about the new world they live in. The entire event is clearly a narrative device designed to get all the kids isolated and alone... and that's all you need to think about that. The show does bring up interesting topics of what it might be like to lose all authority... but how they get there is completely ignored. I can't take the drama seriously when everyone ignores how they got there and they spend all their time planning proms and acting like the new society is just how it's going to be forever... don't even bother to try and figure out why we're here alone. We are... get over it. Just dumb. I care about how they got there, but the show and the characters simply do not. They just wanted an isolated situation for the kids and that's all the thought the writers put into it... and that's all the energy you need to put into figuring it out. It relies on you just accepting the situation and never asking questions: like what happened? Where did the adults go? How do they get signals on their phones? Who is running the power station? Why does everyone have to live in one house when there are countless buildings they go past in town? Why does everyone listen to one self-righteous person? Why does it take them six months to come up with the idea of electing leaders? Dumb. It takes the drama too serious to not ask questions about the situation, and it punishes you for wanting those answers. It tries to be Lord of the Flies, but that story was not actively hostile to it's viewer/reader. That story gave the reader/viewer an easy explanation for why all the kids are alone (a ship wreck)... this one just says "the kids are alone now... that's all you need to know..." Dumb.

If you hate today's youth this show will not help you like them. Everyone in this is a horrible person. They all make horrible choices. They're insufferable, smug, entitled... and the 10 year old girl is clearly written by a 50 year old man. The makers think the audience is dumb. They show you something, and then put up a text card telling you exactly what you already see. This is garbage, it really is. It tries really hard to be cool and ignores everything else that makes a story worth being told. It has a ton of exposition and spends too much time with a character talking to the camera. They turned the "edgy cool" dial up to 11... it's too much. Bottom line, there's nothing to root for and a lot to get mad at... if you have a brain and aren't easily transfixed by bright and shiny things.

What a frustrating experience. Imagine if they had decided to take care of the clearly distressed dog when they first met him, instead of making him chase them across a continent and then sit through their celebration before they finally take the dog to a vet. This is supposed to champion something but I think it's disgusting. It's well acted with great cinematography and a winning lead dog... but it's heartbreaking and not in the obstacles that come at the end... it's heartbreaking from the moment you meet the dog and in how everyone fails him, off chasing their own glory in a meaningless "game". I'm giving it one star. It's disgusting. A living animal in distress is VASTLY more important than winning some arbitrary race. If you care about animals, this should trigger you, as it did me. I don't understand reviews that say "I'm an animal lover and I loved this movie..." -- if you're an animal lover and loved this movie, you lack critical thinking.

What a fantastic movie... very smart... very well acted... incredibly likable and relatable lead characters who had chemistry... and metric ton of heart. I say metric because this is a Canadian production... it rivals anything Hollywood has made in the last 20 years. I loved this movie. I don't see why a movie like this doesn't win awards and become the talk of the town... it very much reminds me of the awards darling movies of the early 2000s, like "Sideways (2004)"... likeable characters learning lessons we can relate to. This movie deserves more play. If you like smart drama-comedy with good acting that avoids cliche (you have to admit this avoids going places most movies would gleefully go)... I can't recommend this more.